Sea Glass by Anita Shreve Page A

after Sexton and Honora have bathed and eaten, they go for a walk along the beach. The sun, just about to set, lights up the cottages and the water with a rosy hue. The surf at the waterline is pink. Honora stops and bends to pick up a piece of pale blue glass. She rubs her fingers along the edges, which are smooth. The glass is cloudy, as though a fog were trapped within the weathered shard.
    “What’s that?” Sexton asks.
    “It’s glass,” she says. “But not sharp. Here. Feel it.”
    Despite his bath, Sexton’s fingers still have white paint in the creases. He holds it up to the light. “It’s being in the ocean gives it that effect,” he says. He hands the shard back to her. “The color’s nice,” he says.
    “Where do you suppose it came from?”
    “It’s trash,” he says. “It’s garbage. Other people’s garbage.”
    “Really?” she says. “I think it’s kind of beautiful.”
    * * *
    “I have to go back to work,” Sexton says early in July.
    Honora has known all along that this will happen, but still, the announcement takes her by surprise. “So soon?” she asks.
    “Someone’s got to make a living.”
    This is said genially, without arrogance or irritation. Honora has worked, at the courthouse and then the bank, since she was fifteen, but there has been no talk of her taking a job. It is assumed by both of them that she will stay behind and make a home. There is enough work to occupy any woman for months.
    “I could go with you,” Honora says.
    “It’s against company policy,” Sexton says. “They would fire me.”
    They are sitting at the kitchen table, having just eaten a turkey loaf and an onion pie. For practical reasons, she has replaced the embroidered tablecloth with a rectangle of blue-checked oilcloth bought at Jack Hess’s store.
    “How will this work?” she asks.
    “I’ll give you money,” he says.
    She glances at the headlines of the newspaper beside his plate.
CELEBRATION OF FOURTH COSTS 148 LIVES.
She turns the newspaper around so that she can read the article. There is a grid next to the report. Seven people died from fireworks, seventy-one in automobile accidents, and seventy drowned.
    “How much do we have?” she asks.
    He looks up and thinks a minute. “Eighty dollars,” he says.
    She reaches across the makeshift table and puts a hand on his forearm. “Just thinking about having you gone, I need to touch you,” she says, surprising both of them.
    His skin is warm through his shirt. Already, she has washed and ironed the shirt several times. By her count, he has six dress shirts, two work shirts, two suits, one pair of work pants (stained now with paint), and a navy sweater that has pilled.
    The touch seems to move him. “I could take you with me,” he says. She watches him ponder the idea as if it were his, as if he had just thought it up. “You could be my assistant. You know how to type, don’t you?”
    “I had to learn for my job at the courthouse.”
    “You could sit down at the machine and demonstrate,” he says, musing. “No one could resist those hands.” He thinks a minute. “I certainly didn’t,” he says.
    “You didn’t?”
    “The day I met you. When I walked into the bank. It was your hands I noticed first. Under the grille.”
    As if to prove the truth of this assertion, he takes her hand and holds it above his empty plate. Her skin is only slightly roughened from the laundry soap. “You could use some Jergens,” he says.
    Sexton likes to say he covers the three P’s — Portland, Portsmouth, and Providence — and everything in between. He shows her on the map exactly where they will go, and she traces the route with her finger. From Ely, they will drive to Portsmouth, then travel out Route 4 to Dover and to South Berwick and to Sanford. From there, they will take the 111 to Saco and then stay on Route 1 all the way to Portland. On the return south, they will head west by way of Hollis Center and Shapleigh and swing by Nashua